Custom (gradient) background of ActionBar Compat

Question

I am using Action Bar Compat so that my action bar with navigation drawer was backward compatible down to API level 9 and I want to change the background of the action bar.

Answer 1

Another approach, without modifying styles.xml:

Here is our example GradientDrawable in res/drawable/ab_gradient.xml

You can set it to action bar in your Activity's onCreate():

ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();    
actionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.action_bar_gradient_shape));

If you use support v7 library (your case):

// make sure to import android.support.v7.app.ActionBar
ActionBar actionBar = getSupportActionBar();        
actionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.action_bar_gradient_shape));

Or if you use ActionBarSherlock:

// make sure to import com.actionbarsherlock.app.ActionBar
ActionBar actionBar = getSherlock().getActionBar();     
actionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.action_bar_gradient_shape));